Facebook and the Future of Publishing
What happens to the hyperlocals?
Facebook has unveiled a suite of ambitious new features over the last few months, and local publishers are getting a little nervous. Above all else, the one people seem to be most concerned about is Facebook’s new Instant Articles, which allows publishers to post articles and other text-based content directly to Facebook. As of this writing, Instant Articles has only been made available to a select group of big-name publishers that have partnered with Facebook. Recently, Facebook announced that it will be opening up Instant Articles to all publishers on April 12.
This means publishers at all levels, but especially smaller publications and those at the local level, will have to seriously reexamine the relationships they have with the communities they serve.
The whole point of Instant Articles is to solve the problem of slow load times. The logic behind it, at least from a reader’s perspective, says that allowing for easier and faster access to content is the smart move for everyone involved. If users don’t have to leave Facebook to view your content, they’re less likely to click away because they don’t want to wait for the page to load. This helps to create a more coherent and coordinated user experience (and eliminates a lot of the clunk and clutter that’s typically associated with some of the smaller, independently-owned sites out there).
From a publisher’s perspective, Instant Articles represents a range of both threats and opportunities when it comes to doing business in the era of social media. On one hand, Instant Articles improves the reader experience, which is almost always a good thing. Happy users are more likely to stay on your site, consumer your content, and (hopefully) give you some of their precious money.
Moreover, the majority of readers and users of local online publications are on Facebook. Facebook’s content stream acts as the portal through which most users access content. Facebook knows us better than any other site on the web (aside from perhaps Google), and it uses that familiarity with our interests and our friends’ interests to help us decide what to read next.
On the other hand, there are obvious downsides. To start, there has been some serious pushback at almost every level when it comes to the idea of consolidating all of your content on a single platform — especially a platform that you don’t own. As a publisher, you’re voluntarily handing over all your data and content to a faceless corporate monolith that hasn’t always acted in the best interests of its users and content partners.
There are also monetary concerns. Small and local publishers, who tend to rely primarily on revenue from display ads and other CPM-based metrics, are concerned that a shift toward Facebook-only publishing will undercut their ability to generate what little revenue they’ve been able to scrape together if they can’t sell ad space on their Facebook pages and posts.
The only solution I can see involves some kind of direct, easily accessible, and — most importantly — secure payment system that allows users to support their favorite publications through Facebook. That still doesn’t solve the issue of data and content ownership, and it essentially takes display advertisements off the table entirely, but it’s a start.
Right now, publishers at all levels should already be in the process of creating a pros and cons chart to figure out what their social publishing strategy will look like on April 12. If you own a digital publication and you haven’t started thinking about this yet, now is the time to start. It’s certainly on our minds at the Center for Cooperative Media.
Over the next few months, we’ll be taking a deep dive into the state of digital media, especially for local publications. I plan to publish a series of articles, videos, and resources aimed at helping independent publishers navigate the changes on the digital horizon. Stay tuned for that, and let me know if there are any particular issues that you’re struggling with in the meantime.
